The Technological and ethical issues of DNA fingerprinting: Is it incriminating or a benefit to society?

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The Technological and ethical issues of DNA fingerprinting: Is it incriminating or a benefit to society?

 

Deoxyribonucleic acid, better known as DNA, is where our genetic code is stored. We need this code to produce genes, amino acids and to enable us to reproduce and form new cells.

DNA is a polymer of monomers called nucleotides.

A nucleotide consists of three components:

  • Deoxyribose – a pentose sugar
  • A nitrogen base
  • And lastly a phosphate group

DNA is composed of to strands of polynucleotides, which are joined together at the bases. Each polynucleotide chain runs in opposite directions, so they are anti parallel. The DNA appears as a double helix, showing that a pyrimidine base is joined to a purine base. Further investigation into this showed that the purines would only join to a certain pyrimidine, and vice versa. It was proven that Adenine would only pair with Thymine and Guanine would only pair with Cytosine.

So if one strand of DNA looked like this:

A-A-C-T-G-A-T-A-G-G-T-C-T-A-G

So the opposite strand would look like this:

T-T-G-A-C-T-A-T-C-C-A-G-A-T-C

So in the end the structure looks like this:

(Source 1)

So this structure (DNA) controls everything from height and build, to the colour of our hair and eyes.

The chemical structure of DNA is the same for everyone; the only difference between people is the order of the base pairs. There are so many millions of base pairs in each person’s DNA that every person has a different sequence.

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Using these sequences, every person could be identified solely by the sequence of their base pairs. However, because there are so many millions of base pairs, the task would be very time-consuming. Instead, scientists are able to use a shorter method, because of repeating patterns in DNA.

These patterns do not, however, give an individual “fingerprint,” but they are able to determine whether two DNA samples are from the same person, related people, or non – related people. Scientists use a small number of sequences of DNA that are known to vary among individuals a great deal, and ...

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